I can't recall the first movie I ever saw at the Shirley Drive In. But I can sure recall a bunch of them through the years. It opened in July of 1953. Several of our summer kids gang like the Yodices' and Dennings were the first kids on our block to go and talking about the Martin & Lewis pics they saw there the morning after.

I know we saw The Davy Crockett movie (three Walt Disney TV shows released as a movie), Lady and The Tramp, Tarantula (Clint Eastwoods first movie), Creature From The Black Lagoon, Gunfight At OK Corral, 3:10 To Yuma (with Glenn Ford and Leora Dana* although we had no idea then she was the daughter of W.S. Dana and once lived on the Dana Estate) The Fly, The Incredible Shrinking Man (that starred our own Polk Road, section 10, Mastic Beach neighbors son: The Incredible Grant Williams !!!....His Mom & mine were friends) I also saw Rodan from Japan ( I was recovering from a super bad case of Poison Oak and looking at it through swollen eyes) Thunder In Carolina with Rory Calhoun & Alan Hale, North To Alaska , Song Of The South ........and the list goes on

When we were little and our mom couldn't get a baby sitter , we got to see movies that they wanted to see. Like High Society with Bing Crosby & Grace Kelly and The Seven Year Itch ... I was pretty bored with the story but Marilyn Monroe in the bath tub and standing over the subway grating got both Butches and my attention!

I remember in the 5th grade, my classmate Sarah Buoanduono saying she and her older sister Joanne would sometimes watch the movies from her second story window... wonder if she ever learned to read lips.

In 1961 when my brother Butch was a teenager and I was a young teenage tag a long, I recall going to see Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea. We pulled up in Willy Conklin's Studebaker, Al Janke was driving, I was in the back seat and Willy, Butch and Augie Paschuita were in the trunk! Lotta laughs.....

My last memory of the Shirley drive in was around 1973. I was living back in Mastic then and as I was driving down Montauk Highway, I saw that some William Floyd scholar had done a little creative writing on the 21 year old marquee. The show was supposed to be Walt Disney's "The Aristocats" but....probably with the aid of a few fellow students to stand on or perhaps a ladder the nights offering read Walt Di ney's Cat Shit

Like most drive ins the property became "too valuable for just a drive in" and turned into just another shopping center, It's anchor department store went belly up quickly...... You gotta wonder What Walt Would Of Done? both Disney & Shirley.

*Leora Dana would appear many times on the Shirley Drive Screen...some of the other movies she appeared in were: Change Of Habit (with Elvis) Some Came Running (with Sinatra) Disney's Pollyanna, her last films that I know of were Amityville Horror 3-D with James Coburn and Baby It's You with Roseanna Arquette (1983). They too would of no doubt played at the Shirley Drive In had it been still standing.